In a defiant victory speech after his electoral landslide, Viktor Orbán reeled off those he perceived as opponents he had “overpowered”. It was a familiar list: “the left at home” – his catch-all phrase for political opponents across the spectrum – then “the international left, the bureaucrats in Brussels”, the “empire” of the Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the international media – and finally, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
While Zelenskiy is admired across the democratic world for his courageous wartime leadership, in Orbán’s Hungary he is just another opponent.
